36Cities / Work2026-09-10

The city is the classroom

A co-op project in Edmonton takes on the complications of scheduling real crews.

Reported by Skyler Hammond, Future Cities Institute

CitiesEdmonton, where a Waterloo co-op project tackled municipal staffing.Photo: Source: University of Waterloo; see original article for photo credits.

The Future Cities Institute’s CIVIC program connects Waterloo students with municipal problems. In Edmonton, Preethi Raghuraman developed SmartShift to help with staffing in Parks and Roads Services, accounting for collective agreements, preferences and certification requirements.

The program treats a work term as a project that can continue beyond one student. Raghuraman later worked with a Planning student on a report intended to help other municipalities learn from the experience. The next challenge is making useful work transferable without losing its local constraints.

Sources 1

Original reporting · uwaterloo.ca

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